Saturday, 31 March 2012

Secondary Modern Schools - some more stories

With news that the government is going to allow for an increase in the number of grammar school places in existing grammar schools, we can see a creeping return of the old segregated system that came in 1944. Part of the way this is done is to eulogize about the grammar schools of the past, whilst quietly forgetting what went on in the schools where the majority of children went.

This quiet forgetting is made all that more easy by virtue of the fact that the story of these schools - the 'sec mods' has not been told in the words of the people who went to them, or taught in them. A whole slice of social history affecting millions of people is hidden.

It's not one story and it's not easily told. What we've done with this blog is to just start on what might be quite a difficult job. After all, the people who find their way to a blog, come over a complex set of hurdles - literacy, computer, internet, a particular kind of internet literacy, until they might happen on our Sec Mod blog. What they are saying, is really interesting and significant and beyond them lie thousands of others who might tell different kinds of stories.

If anyone reading this can think of ways in which their stories might reach this blog too, then please get in touch. My email is available on my website www.michaelrosen.co.uk or you can simply leave a message on the 'comments' slots on the Sec Mod blog. They will only be seen by us and won't be published unless you want them to be.

In the meantime, please browse through the accounts of what it was like to be in the mainstream secondary schools of the post-war era.